Solved Precis from Past Paper 1999

To have faith in the dignity and worth of the individual man as an end in himself, to believe that it is better to be governed by persuasion than by coercion, to believe that fraternal goodwill is more worthy than a selfish and contentions spirit, to believe that in the long run all values are inseparable from the love of truth and the disinterested search for it, to believe that knowledge and the power it confers should be used to promote the welfare and happiness of all men, rather than to serve the interests of those individual and classes whom fortune and intelligence endow with temporary advantage – these are the values which are affirmed by the traditional democratic ideology. The case of democracy is that it accepts the rational and humane values as ends and proposes as the means of realizing them the minimum of coercion and the maximum of voluntary assent. We may well abandon the cosmological temple in which the democratic ideology originally enshrined these values, without renouncing the faith it was designed to celebrate. The essence of that faith is belief in the capacity of man, as a rational and humane creature to achieve the good life by rational and humane means. The Chief virtue of democracy and the sole reason for cherishing it is that with all its faults it still provides the most favourable conditions for achieving that end by those means.

SOLUTION Title: spirit of democracy

Traditional democracy is intrinsically linked with goodwill and human values. It is deemed that people should be ruled by harmonious way instead of tyranny, and power ought to serve common people rather than a privileged elite. Despite there is a change in practice of democracy, but its spirit-promotes and fosters and well being remains some. Although democracy has same shortcomings, yet it seems the only way to achieve the very goal of human welfare.